French-Armenian Jeanne Barseghian has been elected Mayor Of Strasbourg, France, per the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy (EAFJD.)
Barseghian a member of the France’s Green Party is leading with 42.5%, ahead of Alain Fontanel (LREM), first assistant to the outgoing mayor Roland Ries (34.3%), and the socialist Catherine Trautmann (23.2%), per Franceinfo.
Jeanne is the great-granddaughter of Sarkis and Berdjouhi Barseghian. Sarkis was the leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) in Constantinople, he was executed on April 1915 by Ottoman troops during the Armenian Genocide.
After the massacre of intellectuals, Berdjouhi Barseghian took her son and settled in Tbilisi and resumed teaching. When Armenia gained its independence from the Russian Empire and established the First Republic of Armenia on May 28, 1918, Barseghyan moved to Yerevan. She was one of the first three women elected to the Armenian Parliament, during the first Republic of Armenia in 1918. With the collapse of the First Republic of Armenia, Berdjouhi Barseghian committed to serving on behalf of the Armenian people, she chose to live in exile in Paris, where she worked at the Nansen International Office for Refugees and continued her literary endeavors. One of her short stories received an award from the American anthologist, Edward J. O’Brien, and stories like Արփիկը (Arpik) and Օղակ մը շղթայէս (One Ring Chain) were translated into English and French. She published her memoirs, Խանձուած օրերը (Days of Distress), as a series in the American journal Hairenik between 1938 and 1939.
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